


a recipe to provoke hate

by Megkips



Category: Fate/stay night (Visual Novel)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-08 08:07:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5489849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Megkips/pseuds/Megkips
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rin Tohsaka's distrust festers over the course of ten years, ending in steely determination.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a recipe to provoke hate

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tren](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tren/gifts).



Rin sits at the edge of the large, plush chair in her mother’s room, the sleeve of her shirt rolled up to her shoulder. The crest of the Tohsaka family glows on the eight year old’s arm, the same faint blue-white that all Tohsaka magi have boasted in the past. Across from her, Aoi sits in her wheelchair, and for once, her eyes are on her daughter in the present.

“They finished the last of the transfers a week ago,” Rin says, in the way that shows she’s boasting without actually sounding like it. The magi overseeing the transfer had anticipated a full year of work in order to fully move the crest from Tokiomi’s body to Rin’s. It took only nine. “The magi said that it was a remarkable acceptance rate.”

“Your father would be very proud,” Aoi replies. Her voice is faint, like always, but she seems much more aware of the present than Rin’s seen her in, well, nine months. It feels like a lifetime ago that Rin had to come to the private care facility to visit her mother. “I’m sure he’s happy to give you the crest. He’s worked so hard for you and your sister.”

Gone again. Rin sighs, letting her mother continue on asking where Sakura is and where Tokiomi’s gotten to. There’s no point in trying to steer the conversation any other way, and so Rin lets her mother continue to speak, until she decides she’s done and her eyes are on Rin again.. “Can we have some tea?”

“Of course,” Rin says, unrolling her sleeve and hopping down off the sofa. The nurses are always willing to send a nice tea set over when Rin visits. A reminder of the Tohsaka elegance. But before Rin can step more than two feet away from the door, Kirei’s there, looming in the hallway more than Rin likes.

“I came to check on you,” Kirei says, the same bored, disinterested tone Rin’s grown to loathe. 

“I’m fine, and mother’s fine,” Rin says hotly, pushing past him. “I need to get her some tea.”

If Kirei had a mind to make any further remarks, Rin doesn’t hear him. She’s down the corridor and at the nurses’ station in ten seconds flat, quick to talk to them about perhaps just leaving an old Tohsaka tea service set at the private care facility to make their lives easy.

***

“Oof!”

Rin does not land on the practice mat elegantly, as befitting a Tohsaka mage. In the past six months since she’s begun her martial arts training under Kirei, Rin can recall all of five times she’s managed to retain any dignity in falling over. Which isn’t to say that that’s a bad thing. Taking falls is as much a part of learning to fight as throwing punches and striking an opponent. But Rin can’t help but imagine her father, one year older and one year more invested in her growth as a magus, disapproving of the inelegance of the falls.

“That was better, Rin,” Kirei says, standing across the room from her. Rin sits up just in time to see Kirei go from his typical sideways pose to standing straight up, signaling that it’s time for a break. “Although your ability to take a fall continues to be a little lacking.”

“I’m not hurt, so I’m doing just fine,” Rin snaps back, with all the heat and huffiness of a nine-year-old who’s just been kicked down. “I’d like to see you fall a little more often.”

Kirei chuckles at that, a low, rippling thing that comes from the back of the throat. “Well, I suppose we could shift our focus for the rest of the day’s lesson if you so desire.”

“I do, so you will,” Rin says firmly. “But after we have water, as you should do when taking a break. I don’t think that you brought any up here with you though.”

There’s a pause as Kirei glances around the room, realizing that Rin is, in fact, correct. “So I have not. I’ll see to that now.”

And with that, Kirei disappears out the door. Rin sighs, and flops down on the mat again, this time much more elegantly. She sprawls out, arms and legs mimicking the posture used to make a snow angel, and takes a deep breath in, then out. Bajiquan is far more demanding than she ever expected, and part of Rin wonders that if Kirei’s teaching her for some other reason besides her father’s wishes. Whenever it becomes time to practice, Kirei’s cold indifference shifts just a hair into something almost like excitement or passion or _something_ beyond blandness, and it sits ill in the pit of Rin’s stomach.

Kirei returns before Rin can do more than breathe in and out, carrying a tray rather than try to balance a large pewter pitcher with two elegant tulip-shaped glasses. “Are you sure I’m not being too hard on you today, Rin?”

“The only thing that’s hard is that I’m not tall enough to move beyond attacking the low and mid levels of the body,” Rin says, getting back on her feet and bouncing over towards the table Kirei’s heading towards.

“You shouldn’t underestimate how useful size can be, Rin,” Kirei replies, placing the tray down on a little side table tucked into the corner. “I’ve been trying to get you to use it to your advantage.”

Rin sniffs, watching Kirei pour her drink. “It’s hardly my fault you’re a brick wall that won’t fall over for the sake of a student.”

Kirei only laughs.

***

Tokiomi’s funeral had been marked by rain. Today, Rin notes bitterly, it is sunny and windy. Hardly a good day to bury her mother. But then, her eleven year old brain thinks, when is?

Kirei does the service, _again_ , and Rin does her best to tune out his voice as he speaks words that ring false. False from his lips, but also false given Aoi. The Church had always been a Tohsaka thing, not a Zenjou ally. Rin wasn’t sure her mother even fully converted, if she did at all. If that was the case, was this funeral just an insult after sustaining an all too long injury?

Rin pushes the thought aside, and turns her head from her mother’s grave to the small group of people now departing. Before, the group had been larger. Other magi within Japan had attended her father’s burial, sharing begrudging glances at Kirei for being a priest and a part of the Church. Only her mother’s family was here today, and even then, it wasn’t all of them. One person couldn’t be there at all.

Rin speaks to the few of the mourners that walk over and express sympathy, and they all file away. Back to lives now cracked from Aoi’s death, but not utterly broken. Rin takes a deep breath, and looks down at the ring on her hand.

Her mother’s engagement ring. A beautiful diamond with a prong setting and more diamonds set in a glorious channel, gold surrounding them. Her father’s prana still lingered on the ring, thrummed really, as if he was still alive and this was his heartbeat. He had made the entire ring himself through his magecraft, as he had done with his and Aoi’s wedding rings. Rin had wanted to keep those too, but Kirei insisted that those be buried with her parents.

_Kirei._

“You did very well today,” Kirei said, coming to stand beside Rin. 

Rin’s left hand folds over her right, obscuring the ring from view. She stays silent, hoping that ignoring Kirei will prompt him to go away.

“I’ll be waiting outside the cemetery gates to drive you home, if you’d like.”

“I’ll walk,” Rin says coldly. “I could do with the exercise.”

Kirei’s little _hmph_ is one of amusement rather than irritation, which makes Rin want to stomp on the priest’s feet and yell at him, out of sheer instinct. “Very well,” he says, his voice lighter than it should be on such an occasion. “We’ll talk later.”

And with that, Kirei’s gone. Everyone’s gone, save the gravediggers waiting just a few graves over. Rin sighs, feeling their eyes resting on her, and turns to them.

“I don’t plan on leaving anytime soon,” she informs them. “You obviously have other things to do rather than stand around and wait for me to go, so you might as well just start now.”

The statement takes the three men standing there by surprise, judging by their slack jaws, but dutifully they walk over and begin to shovel the dirt onto Aoi’s grave. Rin watches them fill the hole back up, meter by meter, standing ever present watch until they’re done. They leave without a single word, and once they’re gone, Rin moves so that she’s sitting above where her mother’s lap once was, and stares at Aoi’s headstone. 

The tears that come out are to make sure the grass grows nicely in the area, Rin tells her mother.

***

“That can’t be right,” Rin says to the book, frowning at the diagram within. Her father’s careful handwriting is nowhere to be found on this particular page, meaning that figuring out how to transfer mana from three small gems into one large gem is entirely on her. The instructions, cryptic as ever, offer only general statements, rather than an outline of a precise method.

“Stupid book,” she adds, after it becomes apparent that staring at the page and waiting for it to make sense isn’t going to work. It’s a struggle that’s become all too frequent for Rin’s taste as she’s begun to truly go through the texts held in her father’s workshop, trying to further her education in magecraft without any tutor. 

Thirteen, Rin had reasoned with herself back in February, was the perfect time to truly start mastering her craft. She had been given a few years of extra childhood thanks to mourning for her parents, but being a teenager meant putting that aside and becoming the elegant Tohsaka mage she was expected to be. Kirei Kotomine certainly wasn’t doing anything to help either. The most instruction he ever gave was their twice-weekly bajiquan lessons, and the cursory discussions they had concerned going to the grocery store and if Rin would be coming to mass this Sunday.

In theory, Kirei knew about the Tohsaka magecraft. He had been the student of Tokiomi for three years before the man died. But then, Kirei didn’t possess the Tohsaka family crest which only needed to be activated in order to unlock all sorts of fea--

\-- _Oh._

Rin rolls her eyes at the book, realizing that the lack of notes on the page wasn’t due to her father never having studied the page. Something this simple was already in the family crest. Rin pauses just long enough to activate her circuits, then gets out from behind her father’s old desk (her desk) to retrieve the needed gems. Three small sapphires loaded with her own mana, and one large ruby to transfer the energy into. Nothing too hard.

With all the supplies gathered, Rin sets them carefully down on the desk, but doesn’t sit. Instinct tells her to stand over the precious stones, her hand outstretched, and to begin to chant. Rin opens her mouth, feeling the words well up in her throat. German this time. 

The expenditure of prana sparks from the tip of her fingers and traces paths from them to the stones on the desk. Bright blue sparks flick up, illuminating the workspace, casting everything in an eerie glow. But as Rin can feel her energy moving from the small sapphires into the larger ruby, she can feel the ruby strain. 

It’s no expense of skill to reinforce the gem, but soon the need to grow more sides to accommodate the energy becomes pressing. Swiftly, still relying on the feedback from her own prana and the ancient wisdom of her family’s crest, Rin encourages the ruby to grow, to be proportionate and--

\--and the prana dies down. The transfer’s done, but what greets Rin at the end is a strange ruby indeed, looking rather misshapen compared to its formerly flawless and perfectly cut self. An unladylike grunt escapes her in response to the results.

Then there’s a knock on the door.

“Yeah?” Rin asks, knowing that only one person could be knocking right now.

“May I come in?” 

“Yeah, sure thing, Kirei,” Rin replies, sitting down in her father’s chair. Years later, and it’s still molded to his form.

The door creaks open, and Kirei steps into the room. His eyes immediately go to the strange ruby. “Did you try to grow that as you were transferring energy into it?”

Rin glares. “Why?”

“Curiosity,” Kirei replies. “And because there was something that your father mentioned to me about this particular technique that looks like it skipped being embedded into the family crest.”

There’s condescension there, Rin knows it, but the rest of the statement is too important. Gesturing over the expanse of the desk, her eyes lock with Kirei’s.

“Show me, then.”

***

Rin looks from the watch on her wrist and up to the doors of Saint Peter’s basilica and sighs. Figures that Kirei would decide to run late and leave Rin Tohsaka, a mage, standing in the piazza that’s at the center of the entire Church. Any other mage would have been asked to leave on sight. As it is, Rin’s already felt a few suspicious glares from passing by nuns and priests, although that could be for a host of reasons, such as her just above the knees skirt and the fact that she’s standing around like a delinquent, rather than a church goer or a tourist.

“Really,” Rin mutters to herself, folding her arms across her chest. Kirei’s offer to take her along to Rome while he saw to business there had sounded like a vacation too good to be true at the time, and it was proving to be just that now. Every day, at six o’clock, for the past three days, Rin has had to wait outside of the basilica for Kirei, walk with him across the bridge into the rest of Rome, and give him faux cheerful reports about what she did all day. While it isn’t bad practice to use on her fellow ninensei when the school year begins again, Kirei asked a million questions about Rin noticing particular details or going to this or that church, and it is beginning to get exhausting. All of that is before they would go out to eat, and Rin will inevitably be mistaken for Kirei’s niece or other relative (although _obviously_ not his daughter), making the whole thing even more mortifying than it was in principle.

 

After ten more minutes of awkward standing around, Kirei emerges from the basilica, his purple clothes replaced by simple black. He has been dressed this way their entire time in Rome, but Rin never asked after the wardrobe change. There are enough other priests wearing the exact same thing around that Rin figured Kirei just wanted to blend in.

“My apologies,” Kirei says as he approaches. Rin sniffs, in recognition of Kirei’s presence if not in apology. “That meeting ran much later than any of us intended. Moreover,” he pauses, eyes meeting Rin’s. “I’m afraid that I have to accept a private dinner invitation tonight. Will you mind dining alone?”

“Not at all,” Rin says, her speed betraying her enthusiasm at being able to dine alone. “I’ll be back at the hotel before ten o’clock.”

The sheer speed blindsides Kirei, and Rin’s quick to turn on her heel. “I’ve got enough money for dinner too! I’m going to the Pantheon area!”

Kirei doesn’t say anything in response. Rin actually doesn’t think he has the time, because she’s already well out of earshot and certain of _just_ what to do for dinner. She walked past a gelateria on Via degli Uffici del Vicario called Giolitti with more gelato flavours and cookies than anyone back home could imagine, and being able to recall each and every treat would truly be an excellent topic of discussion for the first day of classes.

***

“It is most unusual,” Kirei says, and for once he actually sounds concerned.

For once, the concern is mutual. For the past six months the always carefully monitored leylines of Fuyuki have swelled with prana closer to the fifty-nine year mark. The influx is, as far as Rin can tell in reviewing the data the Church has gathered, impossible to explain. There’s no reason at all for the sixty year interval to be cut down to ten.

“That’s underselling it,” Rin says, flipping a page of the notes over to read what’s on the back. It’s notes from the Association, writing to Kirei about needing to prepare a master, and when the anticipated start date would be. “It leaves us with no time to prepare at all.”

“It does not,” Kirei agrees, folding his hands together and resting them on the Tohsaka kitchen table. “The Einzbern and Matou are at a similar disadvantage, as are any masters the Association might think to send. This level of unpreparedness bodes ill for what is to come.”

“But it is July, and I have until February.”

“ _I?_?” Kirei reiterated, eyebrows lifting ever so slightly.

“The duty of the Tohsaka line is to participate in the Holy Grail War, is it not?” Rin says, taking the papers spread out on the table and beginning to stack them neatly. “That means that as the only Tohsaka, I will be selected as a Master. I need to begin preparing now.”

There’s a pause on Kirei’s side of the conversation, filled by shuffling papers. Finally, the priest offers a bland, “For that reason, I would advise not participating in the Holy Grail War, Rin.”

The audible break between the war’s title and her own name, imbued with more gravity than strictly needed causes Rin to perk up. “And why would you say that, Kirei?”

“You said it yourself. You are the last Tohsaka,” Kirei says evenly, as if remarking on the weather. “If this was sixty years on we wouldn’t have to have this discussion, but if you choose to enter a contest with a low survival rate, you may truly be the last Tohsaka mage to make use of your family’s crest.”

It is a good point, Rin begrudgingly admits to herself. But Kirei isn’t allowed to know it, and so Rin huffs up instead, cutting back with a sharp, “And if I don’t do this, the next Tohsaka will be ashamed of me for shrinking my family duties.”

Kirei frowns. “I did promise your father that I would look after you.”

“You’ve done just fine,” Rin replies coolly, knowing that for the false truth it is. “If I make the choice to participate then it’s because I decided to, not because you failed to talk me out of it.”

It’s as if those words absolve Kirei of guilt, because the next words out of his mouth are, “Your father left notes about his preparations, and I’ll be happy to answer any questions you have about the matter. But we should perhaps focus on the matters the Association brought up in this letter, about what to do if another fire happens. Should something happen to me this time, you’ll be the one responsible for covering everything up.”

***

Summon Archer or Saber, Kirei says on the answering machine. Rin vaguely regrets that she can’t pick another class entirely, just to spite the priest’s faux concern mixed with practical instructions.

***

“How curious,” Kirei says, noticing the command seals on Rin’s hand. Shirou’s already outside the church, and Rin wonders how long Kirei was biting back on that remark.

“What is?” she bristles, drawing her hand into the pocket of her coat as quickly as possible. 

“Your command seals,” the priest continues, folding his hands behind his back. “They look remarkably like your father’s.”

Rin blinks, hardly expecting that response. “Do they?” she asks mildly, trying to hide the surprise and delight in her voice.

Kirei nods in affirmation. “His were less spaced out, admittedly, but the overall design is quite similar. It makes me wonder if other Tohsaka Masters have shown such a similar pattern, or if it is particular to you two.”

“Who can say?” Rin replies with an elegant shrug. “If they look the same, then I’ll doubtlessly use them as cautiously as he did.”

“Doubtlessly,” Kirei agrees blandly. “Forgive me the digression, Rin. You should return to your young man out front.”

***

Rin is all too present as Kirei speaks to Lancer, calling her a pawn and entering the word _deception_ into the conversation. She has no time to register Lancer’s own reaction - faintly, it sounds like distaste - as every strange little thing Kirei’s done over the years that seemed ever so slightly _off_ is starting to bubble to the surface. All the conversations about her father. About her mother. About what her parents might think or feel or want to do if they were still around. The words always had a faint implication of a double meaning that only Kirei Kotomine understood.

The priest is in her head. He’s smiling, smirking, making his face so _punchable_ as he says, “And yet you don't seem all that surprised, Rin. You suspected me then?”

Rin knows how hot and angry her retort is, and Kirei’s all too ponderous response about _how long she means by the words_ back to the beginning _._

“Since after this Holy Grail War began? Or does the beginning you speak of refer to the previous Holy Grail War?”

It’s upsetting how obvious everything is in retrospect. Kirei had practically told Rin every chance he got over the years and smiled when Rin failed to recognize the admission for what it was. 

"Now I get it. It was you that killed my father."

The anger that rolls off Rin’s tongue after Kirei’s all too brief and proud boast of _but of course_ should start fires. They don’t, which Rin considers unfortunate, but the ability to hurl all the anger, all the resentment, all the hatred harboured for ten years is nothing short of the greatest catharsis of her life. And as the situation moves beyond Kirei’s sick revelation, one Rin imagines he dreamed about for ten years, Rin is sure of two things: the first is that she’ll get herself out of her current bonds before Shinji or Kirei or anyone else can do anything, and the second is that Kirei Kotomine will _not_ live past this Grail War.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Yuletide, Tren! I really loved your request for something that explored Rin's reaction to the reveal of Kirei murdering her father in Fate/stay night, and the chance to explore what their relationship was in between the events of Fate/zero and Fate/stay night.
> 
> With thanks to P.R., F, V, and M for the beta.
> 
> The title comes from witch trial records from the Italian city of Modena.


End file.
